Mullivaikaal today is a picture perfect beach with a small fishing community. Boats line the seafront, stuffed with freshly caught fish, sting rays and even tiny sharks. It is hard to imagine that this beach was soaked in the blood of thousands of Tamils in 2009, as the Sri Lankan military indiscriminately shelled the last strip of territory controlled by the outlawed Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). The fishermen say they were allowed to return here in 2012, and the physical signs of massacre have mostly been erased now, apart from a few sand bags in a crater behind the beach. But the pain is still etched onto the memories of the survivors, and many live in ramshackle shelters struggling to make a living.

If Sri Lanka’s new president, Sirisena, can reconcile the grievances of the country’s Tamil minority, then Mullivaikaal will be a litmus test. Many of the families here are headed by widows, who lost their husbands in the final months of the war. When I asked a group of them if the new president has made any improvements to their lives, the response was a resounding no. One lady, Uma*, shrugged, held out empty hands and said Sirisena has done “nothing”. The women live in houses built by an Indian government aid scheme. For many, doors are an unaffordable extra in this scheme. Soldiers roam freely around the neighbourhood on tractors and in trucks. Plain clothed policemen turn up to women’s meetings. The beach, for all its beauty, has a very spooky atmosphere.

The Sri Lankan government has made sure that army and navy camps saturate this former rebel stronghold. Garish war victory statues blot the roadside landscape. Signs next to blown up water towers remind the Tamils to “SAY NO TO DESTRUCTION EVER AGAIN”. Driving along the highway, military bases appear every ten minutes, with grand entrances and plush buildings inside. Five-star hotels and key tourist attractions can be found inside some of these bases. Many were built on stolen land, and the displaced widows are told to register their family details with the army to have any chance of getting it back, a crude piece of bureaucratic intimidation that keeps them landless. The women say life here was better under the rebels, but that way of life has now been destroyed.

Remembering the dead

May 18 is the sixth anniversary of this destruction. All around the world on this day since 2009, Tamil people have gathered in huge numbers to remember their dead. Inside Sri Lanka, the mourning has had to happen in secret. The first year after the war ended, the Tamil Civil Society Forum tried to hold a commemoration service with priests, but hundreds of soldiers arrived outside. The army said to the organisers “If you do it I will suspect you as an LTTE sympathiser”. I.D. cards were taken from everyone and police went to priests’ homes at night and threatened to shoot them. But with a new president in place, activists are testing the waters of the so-called new democracy, and seeing what they can get away with.

“This year the commemorations will happen in public”, Father Elil Rajendram assured me. But as he is choosing a location for the memorial service in Mullivaikaal, a mysterious motorbike pulls up behind us, with the riders dressed in Denis the Menace striped polo shirts. These are intelligence officers, Father Elil explains, who are spying on the priest’s preparation. Despite the intimidation, local people still seem determined to attend. Uma says she is not scared to go, as her son was killed at the end of the war. Preparations are happening across Tamil towns and villages. As I arrive in Jaffna to meet another organiser, news comes through that his event has been banned by the police, to prevent ‘a breach of the peace’. The authorities say rival Tamil political groups could clash – a far-fetched scenario. Police seem unwilling to facilitate free assembly, instead inventing spurious reasons to ban or restrict public events.

The Tamil National People’s Front (TNPF), an opposition political party, circumvent the ban by switching locations at the last minute, and gather on a remote beach in Maruthankerni under a makeshift shelter. Buses venture for miles down a pot-holed road, and before long over a hundred people have arrived. Red and yellow bunting (Tamil national colours) is put up everywhere, and lanterns are lit. The commemoration goes ahead, but the organisers say Sri Lankan military intelligence are photographing everyone there. Father Elil’s multi-faith commemoration service in Mullivaikaal also went ahead, albeit under heavy surveillance. Participants started photographing the intelligence officers, perhaps a sign that the fear barrier is beginning to waiver. Hundreds of students and staff gathered at Jaffna university, and commemorations happened in all corners of the Tamil parts of Sri Lanka. A brave performance, but a sinister scene for a so-called democracy.

Tamil National Alliance vs Tamil National People’s Front

The Tamil National Alliance (TNA) is the traditional choice for Tamil nationalist voters, winning almost all the seats in former rebel-held areas. But many people feel that the TNA is not challenging the new president’s spluttering reforms enough. Gajendrakumar Ponnambalam, founder of the rival TNPF, says the TNA leadership gave Sirisena their “unconditional support” when he won the presidency, putting Tamils in a weak bargaining position. Ponnambalam was an MP for the TNA until the war ended, when he split from the party over fears that they were becoming compromised. Parliamentary elections are due any time in Sri Lanka, and the TNPF stands a chance of gaining at least one seat if it can reach out to Tamils who are also unimpressed by the TNA’s recent performance. But Ponnambalam says that going against the TNA with its money, media influence and historic association with the Tamil Tigers will be tough.

Ponnambalam says that even if he does not return to parliament this time, he is more interested in “building power outside the ballot box”, by which he means “mass peaceful mobilisations that could force the Sri Lankan state to make some real concessions to the Tamils”. In three decades of armed struggle, the closest parallel to Ponnambalam’s current thinking was the Pongu Thamil (Tamil Upsurge) events, which mobilised over a hundred thousand people to gather in support of Tamil self-determination year after year in towns across the region. Jay*, who was instrumental in starting those events, told me how they sent ‘animators’ to villages and organised small theatre performances, where local people gained confidence to share their stories, before coming together en masse at the Pongu Thamil gatherings. But he thinks that it could take 5 or 10 years for Tamil people to regain their confidence for that scale of mobilisation.

Protesting sexual violence or threatening national security?

And yet spontaneous protests are sweeping the Tamil regions, after an 18-year-old school girl Sivaloganathan Vithiya was brutally raped and murdered on Pungudutivu island off Jaffna on 14 May. The police allegedly told the girl’s family when they reported her missing that she had probably eloped with her boyfriend. Sexual violence in Sri Lanka has become synonymous with the security forces, but the prime suspects in this murder are Tamil civilians. A Tamil doctor told me that this case was a reflection of a wider breakdown of society under the pressure of a counter-insurgency strategy, where police and soldiers are allegedly pushing drugs and alcohol onto the youth.

Angry school kids have taken to the streets in large numbers and whole towns hundreds of miles away from Jaffna have shut down in hartal strikes. The protests reflect a widespread frustration at the vulnerability of Tamil women, and even a certain nostalgia for times when women could walk the streets safely at night in rebel held areas. But whether the protests will grow into more a sustained movement, like in India after the 2012 Delhi bus gang rape, remains to be seen. Already, hardline Sri Lankan nationalist politicians are branding the protesters as a new wave of Tamil Tiger militants, and calling for a harsh crackdown. Even demonstrations against sexual violence are seen as a threat to national security. The president has promised to create a ‘national security plan’ to prevent a ‘terrorist resurgence‘. On May 20, crowds in Jaffna were met with teargas and 127 people were arrested, as riot police, Special Task Force anti-terrorist commandos and soldiers came out on the streets.

Despite the militarised law and order situation, the UK is still training Sri Lanka’s police, even after the contract expired in March 2015. Staff from the Scottish Police College are currently in Sri Lanka on a three week visit. Their taxpayer-funded ‘aid’ work is apparently focusing on ‘community policing, ethical leadership and organisational management’. Their approach seems at odds with a police force dressed in khaki uniforms, some carrying kalashnikovs, and where the police stations in Tamil towns look more like garrisons. A Tamil Civil Society Forum member told me that “For us Tamils, police and army are in the same category. They both all speak Sinhalese [the language of the majority population]. They were the ones who started the harassment and beatings in our youth. We have not seen any improvement. When the Sinhalese police come to Tamil areas they are different people.”

‘War hero’ day

The fear of a Tamil uprising is something that resonates powerfully among Sri Lanka’s majority Sinhalese Buddhist community and generates strong support for the armed forces. The last president, Rajapaksa, embodied this anti-Tamil sentiment as he vanquished the Tigers and pushed Sinhalese settlers onto Tamil land. Although his personal corruption may have cost him the presidency, he still haunts the political landscape. The new president promised to hold a more respectful Remembrance Day, instead of Rajapaksa’s triumphalist annual War Heroes parades, on May 19. But in the end the difference was mere semantics, as the event looked the same as previous years. “Rajapaksa celebrated May 19 as ‘war victory’ day. These new people have to have an international image to say they are not Rajapaksas, that they are different and commemorate all the minorities,” said Kusal Perera, a Sinhalese journalist, “So what they did was they branded this ‘war victory day’ with a different label, to say ‘war heroes remembrance day’. But the celebrations were exactly what Rajapaksa did. Huge military parades. This is a way of keeping the Sinhala supremacist ideology going for decades to come. All these things are in the package with a different brand name called ‘remembrance day’. But if you go to the ministry of defence website the lingo is different and its still called ‘war hero’ day. It’s like selling the local Arrack with a black label.”

Even in Colombo, Sri Lanka’s capital, journalists who welcomed the new president are sceptical about what change can happen for the Tamils. Lasantha Ruhunage, president of Sri Lanka’s Working Journalist Association, said that the press face less threats now than under the previous administration, but the new president has refused to set up a commission to investigate cases of journalist who disappeared. Many more had to flee the country and still cannot return. Another reporter told me as we walked through two sets of heavy steel gates that his office was bombed twice during the last ten years, by groups linked to the government. A new Right to Information law is being drafted, which could act as a check on corruption, but Ruhunage is concerned that it includes a national security exemption with no definition of what is ‘national security’.

Scraps of land

Sri Lankan politicians have to court Sinhala nationalism and Buddhist assertiveness to stay in power. Even small scale returns of Tamil land are seen as a betrayal. If President Sirisena gives the Tamils too much before the parliamentary election, then Rajapaksa could make a come back at the polls, observers warn. But a member of the Tamil Civil Society Forum said that “If Sirisena does not even try to explain to the Sinhalese electorate why Tamils deserve their land, then he will not have a mandate to address it when he stays in power, and the Tamils will almost certainly get nothing.”

One example is the people of Sampur, who fled their land in 2006 when the Sri Lankan military attacked. Survivors say that the shelling killed 70 residents before they could escape on boats. Since then the thousand or so families have been displaced multiple times, before returning to temporary camps just across the road from Sampur in 2009. In that time, their homes had been bulldozed and the land fenced off by the Navy. Part of it was sold to foreign investors in a 4 billion USD deal to build a heavy industrial plant. But the people of Sampur refused to go away, and in a landmark case for Tamil land rights they finally won some of their land back on 20 May 2015. So far, only about a fifth of the families had got their land back and the government was yet to give any funds to rebuild the homes that it had demolished. When I visited Sampur the following day, the residents were rushing around trying to find what was left of their homes. One family only had a handful of bricks. Drinking wells had fallen into disrepair, mango and coconut trees had lost out to thorny ‘jungle’ trees. Bonfires were being lit everywhere as people hacked down the bushes and franticly tried to clear the land. The men wanted to camp there tonight, to stop the navy coming back and stealing the land again. But it was too dangerous for the women to sleep there too, they said, glancing nervously at the Navy base 100 metres down the road.

If this is Sri Lanka’s ‘new democracy’, then the Tamils are still living in the shadow of the military.

As usual Sri Lanka’s cosmopolitan liberals have it wrong and that includes its most prominent personality, Minister of External affairs Mangala Samaraweera. His embrace of the Diaspora is wrong, not because the Diaspora is diabolical but because Mr. Samaraweera’s embrace is indiscriminate.

Sri Lanka must welcome its Diaspora or Diasporas (plural). This is true of us as a country as well as of the Government of Sri Lanka. But the Diaspora is not a homogenous entity. I do not mean that the Sinhala Diaspora is good and the Tamil one is bad. What I do mean is that there are extremists in both the Tamil and Sinhala Diasporas, just as there are moderates. The Government and the country should open its doors and roll out the red carpet for the moderate, enlightened currents of both Tamil and Sinhala Diasporas. The Government should go beyond that and strive to promote a truly Sri Lankan, i.e. Tamil and Sinhala Diaspora, by building bridges between the moderates, the progressives, of both sides. (Indeed this is the policy I practiced with some success when I represented Sri Lanka in France.) Instead, what Mr. Samarawera has done is to embrace the anti-Sri Lankan element of the Tamil Diaspora.

By anti-Sri Lankan, I do not mean anti-Mahinda Rajapaksa, because that is a matter of democratic political choice. Nor do I mean by anti-Sri Lankan, a generally violent discourse or disposition. After all, Mr. Suren Surendiran is a civilized chap and Fr. Emmanuel is quite affable, even warmly so. By anti-Sri Lankan I refer to an objectively verifiable political stance against Sri Lanka’s national interest. The evidence is out in plain view in the interview that Suren Surendiran of the GTF gave the state-run Daily News, AFTER the conciliatory meeting with Foreign Minister Samaraweera and the resultant conversion to moderation on the part of the GTF. In it he spells out the four pillars of GTF policy. If I may mix metaphors, the smoking gun is in pillar number 3:

‘…Explaining the third pillar, he said: “The third is to actively lobby and create awareness within the international community, international institutions and governments regarding the injustices and alleged breaches of international laws, including international human rights and humanitarian laws that amounted to war crimes and crimes against humanity. Lobby for international independent investigations of both sides…Surendiran said the GTF intends to carry out the Four Pillar Strategy “with the help of the people of Sri Lanka, in the Diaspora and the international community including India.” He added that since 2011, the GTF has been progressing under this programme.’ (‘GTF to work on four pillar strategy’ Kathya de Silva-Senarath June 16, 2015)

The problem with the Ranil–Mangala–CBK model of reconciliation and peace-building is that they have learnt nothing from their unsuccessful efforts of the dismal Decade of Appeasement 1995-2005. This is not to say that the Mahinda Rajapaksa administration got postwar peace-building and reconciliation right. Far from it: the first mistake made in that realm was to abolish the Secretariat for Co-ordinating the Peace Process (SCOPP) headed at the time by Prof Rajiva Wijesinha.

The Ranil-CBK-Mangala troika made the gross mistake of thinking that peace could be arrived at without the total military defeat of the Tigers and more basically, the elimination of Prabhakaran. Given that peace could not be arrived at even during the much less intense JVP insurrection of 1986-1989 without the elimination of Wijeweera and the defeat of the JVP, it took a really high degree of obtuseness to assume that it would be different with a far more fanatical, successful and powerful LTTE.

For its part the Rajapaksa administration made the opposite error. Just as Ranil-CBK-Mangala failed to realize that peace could not be achieved without a successful war; that a victorious war was a necessary precondition for peace; the Rajapaksa administration whose great merit was to recognize as their predecessors did not, that military victory was both possible and necessary, made the opposite error of assuming that a necessary condition was a sufficient condition. It thought that the victorious end of the war was a sufficient condition of a sustainable peace. It failed to realize that a process of peace-building was necessary, and that this peace-building required not only material reconstruction and development, not only de-mining and rehabilitation; but also political negotiation. It failed to understand that political negotiation, while a discredited tactic of appeasement when practiced in wartime by Ranil-CBK, was however, a necessary postwar practice and prerequisite for a sustainable, durable peace.

Ranil-CBK-Mangala strove to achieve peace by talking to the wrong people: the fascist, fundamentalist Tigers and their fellow-travellers. They could and should have worked out a political project with the anti-Tiger/non-Tiger Tamil groups and caught the Tigers in a politico-military pincer, but they did not. They could have implemented the 13th amendment instead of wasting time and political capital with the union of regions packages of 1995 and 1997, the Liam Fox agreement and the CFA, the Solheim mediation, the PTOMS etc. They could have appointed an interim administration within the 13th amendment and installed a coalition of progressive anti-Tiger Tamil groups which had worked with the UNP earlier and knew CBK from her SLMP years. But they did not.

For their part, the Rajapaksa administration could have done what President Putin successfully did in Chechnya with Ramzan Kadyrov, and empowered their ally Douglas Devananda in 2009, as the war was won and before the TNA recovered. Instead it opted for a (hyper-securitized) developmentalist strategy which had as a political component, a vain effort to rebuild the SLFP in the North and East.

Interestingly, CBK and MR administrations had the same option and made the same mistake: they both had an anti-Tiger, anti-secessionist Tamil partner which they had inherited from the Premadasa–Ranjan Wijeratne years, but they failed to play that card. CBK preferred to talk to the fascist Tigers (through the Norwegians) even after they tried to kill her and instead, blinded her in one eye.

The Rajapaksa administration correctly understood the fascist character of the Tamil Tigers and defeated them, but having done so it strove in the postwar phase, to operate politically in the North without any identifiable Tamil partner and strategic ally. Having made that mistake, the Rajapaksa administration compounded it by allowing the default option to fail, in that the dialogue with the TNA broke down and stayed suspended.

Mangala Samaraweera has picked up where Ranil, CBK and he left off. If the GTF is “moderate” according to Mangala, we can imagine what his idea of radicalism is. What the Sri Lankan government—any Sri Lankan government—should do, is to adopt, in its Diaspora outreach, a policy of concentric circles, which privileges the anti-Tiger, anti-secessionist elements of the Tamil Diaspora before reaching out to those who were Prabhakaran’s fellow travellers, and still refuse to criticize him or the LTTE. No Government should embrace those who, even after dialogue, boast that one of the pillars of their policy is to lobby the international community including governments, for international investigations into ‘war crimes’ and ‘crimes against humanity’.

The basic task of any Foreign Minister and Foreign Ministry should surely be to oppose, refute, rebut and defeat those Diaspora elements who threaten our national sovereignty by lobbying for international war crimes inquiries against Sri Lanka (and in a fraudulent even-handedness, the dead Tigers). If only in his capacity as this country’s Minister of External Affairs, Mangala Samaraweera should be far more discriminating in whom he chooses to partner with in external affairs.

Over 300 Tamil youths in the Vaddukoddai area were rounded up last week and interrogated by the Sri Lanka military personnel, informed sources said.

According to sources, over 600 troops had arrived late on Friday night and rounded up the young men and women before taking them to the Vaddukoddai Police Station for questioning.
The military officers claimed the search operation was carried out following a tip-off the army had received on an LTTE suspect hiding in the area, sources said.

All movement of people and vehicles entering Vaddukoddai and exiting the area were restricted by the army during the search operation.

The search and interrogations continued till Saturday morning. Following the interrogations, the young men and women were released, sources added.
(AP)

But what does this shocking disclosure tell us about the Omar Abdullah regime’s attitude on a matter concerning Kashmir’s future?

GK EXCLUSIVE

A. G. NOORANI

On 27 January 2014 Sri Lanka’s Northern Provincial Council (NPC) passed a resolution calling for an international probe into the war crimes allegedly committed during the country’s ethnic conflict. It was proposed by M. K. Shivajilingam of the Tamil National Alliance (TNA), which formed the administration after winning the 2013 provincial elections.
The Council has sought an international inquiry into the Sri Lankan government’s acts of “ethnic cleansing”. He proposed a second resolution calling for rejecting Sri Lanka’s own inquiry mechanisms.

The 38-member Council, of which 30 belong to the TNA, passed all the three resolutions. Another resolution called for building a monument in memory of civilians killed in the final military assault on the LTTE in May 2009.
This resolution will deeply embarrass Sri Lanka’s Government. In a couple of months the UN Human Rights Commissioner Navi Pillai will submit her report to the Human Rights Council in Geneva which will discuss it and adopt a resolution. Her disquiet at Colombo’s lack of progress in fixing responsibility for alleged war crimes was openly expressed.
The contrast with Kashmir is striking; in respects more than one. Navi Pillai was allowed to enter Sri Lanka. India’s record on this matter is shameful. Elections in the Tamil-dominated Northern Province were not rigged and Tamils elected to the Council did not hesitate to stand up for their own people and confront the Centre.

In Kashmir, Farooq and Omar Abdullah took turns in robbing the State’s Legislative Assembly of its rights, powers, authority and prestige. On 1 March 1991 Farooq Abdullah questioned the Assembly’s power to discuss the future of the State. “We have no right to debate on this issue”, adding faithfully. “It is for the Union Government and the Prime Minister H. D. Deve Gowda to take army view on the subject”. Also, “we have no right to debate on the Line of Control in the State Assembly”. Indeed, in his view the Kashmir dispute was a matter for the Prime Ministers of India and Pakistan to discuss – and “whatever they decide we have to accept”. The Bombay High Court ruled on 3 April 1959 that the Bombay Municipal Corporation had the right to pass a resolution denouncing the execution of Hungary’s former Prime minister Imre Nagy. Does Kashmir’s Assembly enjoy less power than a Municipal Corporation?

Omar Abdullah successfully prevented the Kashmir Assembly from passing a resolution on Afzal Guru’s execution. Nor had he any interest in passing one earlier to urge clemency for him. In this he enjoyed the tacit support of the rival Claimant to the Centre’s support, the PDP. It was “a fixed match”.

Now comes the latest disclosure which should shame Omar Abdullah. It is a veritable bombshell. On 14 August 2012, Asaduddin Owaisi and a few other MPs in the Lok Sabha tabled this question. “Will the Minister of HOME AFFAIRS be pleased to state; (a) whether the Interlocutors appointed for Jammu and Kashmir have submitted their report to the Government; (b) if so, the details thereof; (c) whether the interlocutors have recommended to review several laws under implementation in the State since 1952 including the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA): (d) if so, the details and the reaction of the Government thereto; and (e) the time by which the said report is likely to be made public?”
The Minister of state in the Ministry of Home Affairs Jitendra Singh replied, “(a): Yes, Madam, (b) to (e) : The final report of the Interlocutors including recommendations has been uploaded on the website of the Ministry mha.nic.in for the benefit of the public at large and hard copies placed in the Parliament library for an informed debate. The Government has not taken any decision on the report.”

This reply was treated as an assurance by Parliaments Committee on Government Assurances which was required to be implemented by the Ministry of Home Affairs within the three months from the date of reply. “But the assurance is yet to be implemented”, the Committee noted. The Ministry of Home Affairs in a letter dated 4 April 2014, requested the Committee to drop the assurance on this revealing ground: “A copy of the Report of Interlocutors has been forwarded to the State Government for their comments. The comments of the State Government, J&K have not been received so far. Further, a view in the matter is to be taken by the State Government/State legislature. As such, fulfilling the assurance by this ministry is dependent on the response of the State Government/Consideration of the report by the State Legislature. In view of this, it is requested that the above assurance may be deleted from the List of Assurances against the Ministry of Home Affairs.”

The ministry, with the approval of Minister of State in the Ministry of Home Affairs, requested that the assurance be dropped. “The Committee may consider”. This was put up on 4 February 2014. The Committees probably agreed. But what does this shocking disclosure tell us about the Omar Abdullah regime’s attitude on a matter concerning Kashmir’s future?For months the three Interlocutors roamed all over the State feasted and enjoyed State hospitality and facilities. The State was asked by the Centre “for their comments”. The Centre awaited its own response and conveniently declined to offer its own response. This, of course, is a dishonest excuse. The Interlocutors were appointed by the Centre, after all. This is another “fixed match”. But note, even the Union Home Ministry accepts that a view has to be taken “by the State Government/State Legislatures”.

This report paints a chilling picture of the continuation of the war in Sri Lanka against ethnic Tamils, five years after the guns went silent.

The findings are:
• Abduction, arbitrary detention, torture, rape and sexual violence have increased in the post-war period. Targeted for these violations are LTTE suspects, or those perceived as having been connected to, or supporters of, the LTTE. The purported aim is to extract confessions and/or information about the LTTE and to punish them for any involvement with the organisation.
• These widespread and systematic violations by the Sri Lankan security forces occur in a manner that indicates a coordinated, systematic plan approved by the highest levels of government. Members of the Sri Lankan security forces are secure in the knowledge that no action will be taken against them.
• This report establises a prima facie case of post-war crimes against humanity by the Sri Lankan security forces, with respect to (a) torture and (b) rape and sexual violence.

The report is based on:
• 40 sworn statements from witnesses – half men and half women – who testified to their experiences of abduction, torture, rape and sexual violence by the Sri Lankan security forces.
• The abductions and torture described all occurred within the time frame of May 2009 to February 2014, i.e. post-war.
• More than half of the abductions recorded in this report took place during 2013 and 2014.
• Almost all the incidents in this report occurred from 2011 onwards.

The cases of torture, rape and sexual violence covered in this report constitute a small sample of those crimes likely to have been committed against the Tamil population in Sri Lanka. These are witnesses whose families were able to locate them, pay a bribe for their release and send them abroad to the UK. Since there is no centralised system to locate asylum seekers in the UK, there likely are more recent survivors we have not found. Investigators were acutely aware of the risks to witnesses and their families should they be identified and have made every effort to ensure that identities be kept secret so as to prevent retaliation against extended family members still in Sri Lanka. Several witnesses were living abroad and had no idea they would be at risk if they returned home. The overwhelming majority of the witnesses were “white vanned”, a term now used in Sri Lanka to denote abduction by the security forces.

A quarter of the witnesses reported being abducted and tortured on more than one occasion. Witnesses were released from detention only after their family paid bribes to members of the security force, often through intermediaries from pro-government paramilitary groups. Those who exited the country through Colombo airport also paid bribes to avoid being stopped and questioned. The testimony demonstrated the rapes were often extremely violent, leaving the victim bleeding heavily, and often accompanied by racist insults.

One woman was subjected to forced vaginal, anal and instrumental penetration (with a baton), and on one occasion forced to have oral sex simultaneously while being raped. She endured seven gang rape sessions interspersed with severe beatings. All witnesses revealed deep shame and guilt about the sexual abuse; nearly half had attempted to commit suicide after reaching the UK. This report has immediate implications for asylum policy, donor funding and the international community as a whole.

Action must be taken to bring the perpetrators to justice using the International Criminal Court and/or, an international tribunal as well as instigating national prosecutions under universal jurisdiction. Every witness who spoke to our investigators said they were recounting their ordeal in the hope that these crimes would stop and nobody else would have to suffer as they did.
end.

Thousands of Tamils demonstrated in Geneva on Monday to protest Sri Lanka’s rejection of calls for an international probe into alleged war crimes at the end of its civil war.

Some 4,000 people, who had come from across Europe by bus and train, marched through Geneva and crowded into the square outside the United Nations’ European headquarters, according to Geneva police.

The demonstrators blocked traffic through the centre of town and around the central Place des Nations, and police were forced to use pepper spray to contain the situation when protestors began pressing against the security barriers around the United Nations, police spokesman Silvain Guillaume-Gentil told AFP.

They waved red and yellow Tamil Tiger flags, posters demanding “Justice”, and pictures showing victims of the alleged war crimes committed during the final stages of Sri Lanka’s civil war between Tamil secessionists and the state.

The demonstration came during a key annual session of the UN Human Rights Council, which later this month will be asked to consider a US-led draft resolution calling for an international investigation into allegations that up to 40,000 Tamil civilians were killed after government forces ordered them into a no-fire zone in 2009.

Colombo has flatly rejected the draft resolution and the report by UN chief Navi Pillay on which it was based as an “unwarranted interference”, and President Mahinda Rajapakse has accused Washington of treating Colombo like Muhammad Ali’s “punching bag”.

Sri Lanka has previously said it needs more time to address issues of accountability and reconciliation after ending the 37-year conflict, which according to UN estimates claimed at least 100,000 lives.